It matters that people have a way to use the latest findings in psychology beyond buying a pill for depression. It matters that people have a way of looking at their lives that lets them ask the big questions and determine how they want to live – and that this is supported by therapists and mental health professionals.

Posts

World, meet the "Cyberhero"

We know the internet has changed the way we shop, socialize, and schedule – but how is it changing our sense of human potential. When we dream of who we might be in a networked world, what are we dreaming about?

According to Dana Klisanin, Executive Director of Evolutionary Guidance Media Research & Design, society has focused on the negative stereotypes of internet users … like “cyberbullies” or addicts … while a new conceptual archetype demonstrating human potential has emerged and inspired millions: the “Cyberhero.”

“The cyberhero archetype appears to recognize global threats to social and ecological wellbeing as personal threats. Rather than requiring a personal confrontation with immediate danger, the cyberhero archetype requires a personal and collective psychological confrontation with current and/or impending species-wide dangers. Rather than setting out on an epic adventure to far away lands and encountering life-threatening dangers, as in the traditional heroic narrative (Campbell, 1949/1972), the cyberhero, paradoxically, both stays at home and sets off--into cyberspace with the goal of benefiting others.”

Studying this archetype, she notes, is very much in the humanistic tradition – finding new ways that people can lead meaningful lives that strive to be extraordinary rather than limiting itself to addressing symptoms.

The questions raised by the emergence of the “cyberhero” are fascinating: is “cyberheroism” similar to conventional heroism? How do cyberheroes relate to and through their online “avatars?” Do they represent a kind of transpersonal psyche?

Comments and Discussions

The cyber hero is the golden goose of the human rights movement. I think a lot of activists are realizing the power of the cyberhero- and not just economic through donation, but through awareness. And I think the Occupy movement taught us just how powerful the cyberhero was!

Mortality

Death is the great certainty of life -- and a subject we almost never talk about. How we live in its shadow, and the choices we make about the best way to live a life where time is the only non-renewable resource, is a key element of existential thought.